life is good. i am happy.

well hey there.

today is my birthday and what a good day it's been so far.
got to go on a hot date with my man last night.
got presents and kisses this morning from all these boys i live with.
the big boys are at school today.
i shopped rhea lana's this morning with no kids hanging on me.
picked up sawyer from the babysitter's, and met aj for some pad thai & thai tea. yum.
now i have a quiet afternoon to catch up on blogs, mine included. ;)
listening to a shane & shane play list on pandora.
and another dinner out tonight.
i am s-p-o-i-l-e-d.

i am feeling so blessed and loved today.

last week i got our house and closets ready for homeschooling.

i also worked a bunch on getting my clothes ready for rhea lana's this week. i explained it here last year.
i'll work a bunch this week. 
i bought the boys a pogo stick at the sale today for $4. 
i hope i also didn't buy us a trip to the ER.
i can't wait to show them when they get home from school!

i also got some adorable clothes for the boys as well as some way less ugly shoes for Sawyer. ;)

i have a bunch of blog posts swirling around in my head. 
i can't wait to get them out. 

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my prayer today

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what are you doing at 9:00 at night?

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first day of school

2008 (avery), 2008 (finley) 

2009 (avery) , 2009 (finley)

Lamentations 3:22-23

 ²² Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
       for his compassions never fail.
 ²³ They are new every morning;
       great is your faithfulness.

Praise the Lord for a new day and a great morning with my little family.

today is the big day.
it finally came.
we've been talking and talking about it.
somehow my avery is in second grade and my finley is in kindergarten.
it seems to have come fast and slow all at the same time.

i haven't gotten my bearings yet, but i am looking forward to some good structure and some focused attention on my boys.
in case you're new to my blog, my boys go to a university model school where they attend class 2 days a week and i home school them the other 3 days.
we love it. it's a great fit for our family.
home schooling is good for me because it forces me to sit down, look in my children's eyes and be intentional with them.
i can tend to be a busy body and not sit still and just be with them. .....always trying to multi-task.

the boys were excited/nervous about the first day.
they were mostly excited about their new backpacks.

i am enjoying my quiet day with sawyer.
i have been praying for the boys all morning.
wondering how they're doing.
i'm excited to pick up them up and hear all about their first day. Pin It

blah.

tomorrow the boys start a new school year.
avery starts 2nd grade and finley starts kindergarten.

i don't even know how i feel about it right now.
i'm just exhausted and cranky and that's my overwhelming feeling for the moment.

i want to make tomorrow special for the boys.
i hope they forget what a crabby mommy i was tonight.

i need to figure out how in the world to get them to pick up their toys.
it's driving me crazy. i may lose my ever loving mind.
i feel like we've dealt with this for years.
if you get something out, when you're done, put. it. away.
i feel like i'm talking to the wall sometimes.
they don't pick up their toys, they make a gigantic mess of their room, and then they are devastated when i say they have to clean it up. every. single. day.

can i get a witness???
is this just me?

a cluttered house makes a cluttered mind....at least for me it does.
oh mercy,  i think i should just call it a night.

praise Jesus His mercies are new every morning.....i'm gonna need it.

on a lighter, less depressing note, here's my post from the night before avery started kindergarten.

  i promise i'll be back to myself tomorrow.
goodnight friends. Pin It

in a word, humbled.

last night AJ and I watched The Hiding Place. . . the story of Corrie Ten Boom.

have you read the book or seen the movie?
it's so so good.
it'd been years since i watched the movie or read the book and AJ had never seen it.
i was reminded of what an amazing story Corrie Ten Boom had to tell.
just thinking about all the books that are popular right now, Crazy Love, Radical, etc.  . . .
corrie and betsy and all the ten booms really got it. they got it.
they lived it. 
they knew that Jesus was worth everything.
worth inconveniencing themselves. 
worth risking their lives for.

i realized once again  how selfish i am.
i know nothing of what it is to pour my life out. nothing. i am so far from it.

betsy ten boom says this in the movie:
"My Lord Jesus tells me to open the door to whatever comes, to give His love in whatever way I can and I will listen to His voice, not mine."
she was afraid, but she obeyed anyway. for love of her Savior.

i so want that. i want to listen to God's voice, not mine.
i want to obey, no matter the cost. no matter what i have to give up.
i want to loosen my grip on this world.
i believe we are making steps, but i can see we have so far to go.



one of my favorite things about the movie is the constant theme of Jesus showing himself to Corrie and Betsy. . .  letting them know that He was with them.  He wasn't abandoning them.  He is our ever present help in times of trouble.

"There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still." ~Corrie Ten Boom Pin It

and...the diagnosis....

our trip to children's hospital went great.
we stayed with our brother in law chris,  who is in med school there.
that was a nice treat.

it was so evident that God was taking care of us the whole time.
we had heard that you have to wait a really long time at Children's, so that's what we planned for.
i think my purse weighed more than i do with all the snacks and activities i had packed for sawyer.

however, it turned out that it was the first day of public schools there so there were only 2 other kids in the waiting room.  awesomeness.
 also because of that, chris didn't have any patients so he was able to go with us to our appointment.
that was wonderful. 

 he was able to explain things to me more fully and ask questions for me when i sat there like a deer in head lights.

i'd never been to children's hospital before.
it was obvious they worked hard to make it fun for the kids.
there were lots of neat things for sawyer to see and play on.
i was very aware and grateful that children's hospital had not been a part of our lives before.  i do not take that for granted.
when finley was 3 weeks old, he had to stay in the hospital for a few days. i laid awake at night listening to little children cry down the hall.  i gained such a respect for those parents of chronically ill children and what their families go through.  i will never forget that experience.

sawyer did so great. he was a busy little body the whole time but he sat perfectly still and quiet during the exam and xrays. i think he liked the attention. :)
getting the blood work was sad.  but he was a trooper and did great.

i am happy because we have a diagnosis.  we have a direction to go.
he has oligoarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis.  whew, that was a rough one to spell out!
it's what many of you know as JRA (juvenile rheumatoid arthritis) just with a new name.
the good news is that it's only affecting one joint so he should grow out of it.
yay!
he is at risk for uveitis (chronic eye inflammation) so we have to go see an eye doctor every few months.

i'm still trying to wrap my mind around this whole thing, but basically, with juvenile arthritis, the immune system hurts your joints.  it's considered an auto immune disease.

so for right now, he'll have a medicine he takes twice a day and wear the brace and we'll see if the swelling is better in two months...if not, we'll go from there.

so that's it. we're praying for complete healing, no uveitis and for his mama to get over the ugly shoes already.

thanks so much for your prayers and concerns for our little sweetie. Pin It

sawyer.

 little cutie patootie is doing great with the brace.

 he actually wants to wear it, which is a huge blessing.

 we're leaving tonight for children's hospital and we meet with the rheumatologist bright and early in the morning.
if you're wanting to use this information to rob our house, i'm gonna have to disappoint you.
we have family coming to stay with the big boys.

 hoping and praying it will be a quick and easy visit and we'll get a true diagnosis.

he's still adorable even if he does have a mullet and is wearing giant, white shoes. Pin It

bits and pieces

it was soooo good.
we are fortunate to have a great performing arts center in our town.
every once in a while we get to go see a play (thanks mom!) and this one did not disappoint.
it was exciting and magical and we loved every minute of it.

***************************************************************************************************************************
 the last few weeks have been hot.
 record breaking temps hot.
the boys have spent the majority of their time in their underwear.

  doing more art projects. 
we had a tv free week so that meant lots & lots of art projects. 

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sawyer found this 3-6 mo. hat in the rhea lana's pile & insisted on wearing it until it cut off the circulation in his head.

 wow.
cool kid alert!
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the air conditioning in our car went out for the 2nd time in two weeks.
good timing on the hottest weeks of the year.
i love a challenge....a good opportunity to rise above it & choose joy!

  wasting time in the mall while our car was being worked on at Sears.

 ***************************************************************************************************************************

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typical.

this morning while i was waiting for avery to get out of piano, i followed yard sale signs as i often do.
i found this cool empty frame for 30 cents.
weird price huh?
either way, 3 shiny dimes later and that bad boy was mine.

while the boys were eating lunch i quickly gave it three coats of glossy white spray paint.
i would have loved a really bright color, but white is what i had.

then during nap i decided to grab some scrap fabric and staple it on.

then i turned it over.

well shoot.
so i thought maybe i could just prop it against the wall behind some other things and still use it...it was just too cute to lose.
i tried.

oh fine.
do you love how i'm documenting every detail of this lame project?
i threw the whole thing in the trash obviously.
but i had all the stuff out and i remembered another empty frame i had laying around.
so i quick grabbed it & stapled some more fabric to the back of it.

is anyone still reading?
anyone?

crickets chirping. . .

i just threw it up on the shelf in our office.  i like it. 
it may not stay there, but that was a fun little 5 minute project.

and just for kicks, let's pan down. . .

niiiiiiiiicccce.
yes i'm watching so you think you can dance.
stop judging me.
you'd think i'd at least clean up that mess of papers while i'm watching.
one would think. Pin It

mama needs some craft therapy

so y'all remember my $7 chandy?

well i randomly decided i wanted to change out the shades.
the shades i had on it were fine.
didn't love them, didn't hate them. they were cheap.

sooooooo, i wanted to make them over.
i love the look of lamp shades with natural materials i've been seeing.

here are some of my inspriations....

{lettered cottage}

{pink & polka dot ~ it's making me want to spray mine white}

{ballard designs}

{

{creative little daisy}

on a whim, i grabbed a spool of twine from the hardware section while i was grocery shopping on tuesday.

here are the chandy shades before.

they looked a little rough for the wear after a year of hanging. 

see that little black spot?

yeah, that's a dead fly.  appetizing, no?

in cutting off all those stringy things, the plastic shade underneath cracked so i had to take it off too.

not ideal.  it would have been much easier and kept the shape better if i'd had a shade to glue the jute twine to.

but i would not be deterred.

i just wrapped and hot glued and wrapped and hot glued that jute all around the shade. 

and let me tell you this took for-ev-er. 

i worked on it during the boys' nap time & bed time & while they were playing in the yard. 

but honestly, it was mindless and actually kind of fun, so i really didn't mind it.

and now i lovey love love my shades.

i like the casual, laid back look to them.

i also like that they're not perfect. 

i think it gives a more "found object" appeal to them.

i like how the light streams through them. 

total cost for this project: 

$1.47!  (just the cost of the jute twine. . . which i will no doubt use for other projects as well)

plus a blister on my trigger finger from all the glue gunning. 

a small price to pay for new chandy shades, i say.

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